By Fritz ByersSaturday is the birthday (September 30, 1922) of the pathbreaking bassist, Oscar Pettiford, son of a half-Cherokee-half-African-American father and a mother of Choctaw descent. Oscar was not exactly a prodigy, but by his teens he’d shown both his proclivity for music and his desire to innovate. His timing was excellent. Read More
By Kim Kleinman, Contributing WriterIn his Sept. 13 blog post, titled “An Apex of Innovation,” Fritz shared a few of his thoughts about the recent release of “Evenings at the Village Gate,” a live 1961 recording of John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy, along with the pianist McCoy Tyner, the bassists Reggie Workman and Art Davis, and the drummer Elvin Jones. Read More
By Kim Kleinman, Contributing WriterThat descending figure and resolution over a I-IV chord pattern is what grabbed me when pianist Randy Ingram played “Dedicated to You” on a Small’s Live Stream from Mezzrow’s recently. I played Name That Tune with my usual level of success until Ingram announced it afterwards.
By Fritz ByersArtemis, in Greek mythology, is the goddess of free nature, wild animals, the hunt, and vegetation. (If Roman mythology is your thing, think Diana.) Her stature in the ancient world is marked by the countless shrines erected in her honor and by the pervasive cultural veneration directed toward her, in legend, literature, and visual art. Read More
By Fritz Byers
By Fritz ByersYou – we -- can’t imagine the stature John Coltrane had in jazz and the broader culture at the dawn of the 1960s. His defining mythos would eventually be formed by how he would use the seven years he had left – he passed in July 1967, at the age of 40 – and the overtly spiritual quest he undertook as he pushed the limits of jazz tonality and harmonic logic further and further out. Read More
By Fritz ByersI’ve called Jazz Spectrum an anthology since the show’s inception. It’s a baggy term, meaning not much more than that the thing is a compilation of pieces selected by the compiler. True enough. I aspire to make the show a tour through eras, styles, instrumentations, luminaries and unknowns, and so on. Read More
By Fritz ByersI’ve been voting in the annual DownBeat Jazz Poll for nearly as long as I’ve been hosting Jazz Spectrum – 34 years. I just sent in my ballot for this year’s poll. DownBeat, as you probably know, has been covering the world of jazz since 1934. It has survived, better than most, the challenges of the evolving world of publications, communications, and commentary. The current state of jazz journalism is fodder for a post or two, so maybe we’ll get to that down the road. Read More
By Fritz ByersThe centerpiece this week is Passage, the new release from Johnathan Blake’s spirited and tasteful quintet, Pentad.
